A Reddit user has poked major holes in flat-Earther 'logic' with a clever - and easy-to-replicate - experiment deploying a digital camera with a macro lens, plenty of light... and a basketball.

Posted on Reddit by user Useless Pickles as 'Proof that a basketball is flat', the detailed experiment depicts the object as flat-surfaced and not the round ball we all believe it to be.

He played around with perspective and close-ups to make his point. "Upon taking a closer look with a macro lens, I can only conclude that the surface of a basketball, while bumpy, does not appear to have any curvature. Therefore, basketballs are flat. Their roundness must be some kind of illusion caused by perspective and mirages," Useless Pickles wrote sarcastically.

The man behind the debunk told Bored Panda that he wasn't expecting the exercise to convince hard-core flat Earth theorists to accept that their planet is round - after all an abundance of scientific evidence has failed on this count - but he was hopeful it might help someone still on the fence.

Unsurprisingly the experiment attracted a flurry of comments, made up of a mixture of sardonic and earnest responses.

"Basketballs, you can feel with your hands so they're a tangible object, unlike the Earth which you can't feel with your hands," one commenter responded, dismissing the argument. "Fake, that camera is CGI," another user wrote to which Useless Pickles responded "but it's the Nikon P900. The official camera of Flat Earthers!"

A longer post criticises the satirical tone of the post suggesting that if the Earth was round we would all fall off. "Basketballs are not flat, it is only a mere illusion that makes it seem this way, similar to why globies think the earth is round."

Useless Pickles replied: "This makes no attempt to prove that the Earth can't be flat. Quite the opposite. I have proven that there is no such thing as round/spherical objects of any kind! If you look closely enough at any sphere, you won't find any curvature in its surface. SHOW ME THE CURVE!"

Other users, though, said they could see the curve in the photo. "My flat-Earthers father retorted that he sees curve in this photograph and he requested a bowling ball be used instead," one commenter stated. "Ok, seriously? The ball is clearly round you can see it on the top part of the picture.???" another added.

RT has reached out to Useless Pickles for more information on the experiment.

Fester Wrong. Here's the thing, flat earther's may or may not be correct but they are certainly not idiots. While no studies have been done recently, I've reviewed arguments from both sides and, on average, flat earthers are significantly more intelligent. It's not even close. Now I'm just speculating since I don't know you personally but odds are the real reason that you won't argue or don't like to argue with them is because they'll obliterate you. Not only would you be unable to debunk their arguments, you'd almost certainly fail in merely attempting to articulate your own beliefs because the vast majority of them have sat examined since the 3rd grade. No offense meant...just saying.

Here's the thing, flat earther's may or may not be correct but they are certainly not idiots. While no studies have been done recently, I've reviewed arguments from both sides and, on average, flat earthers are significantly more intelligent. It's not even close. Now I'm just speculating since I don't know you personally but odds are the real reason that you won't argue or don't like to argue with them is because they'll obliterate you. Not only would you be unable to debunk their arguments, you'd almost certainly fail in merely attempting to articulate your own beliefs because the vast majority of them have sat examined since the 3rd grade. No offense meant...just saying.

Wow. Where have you been hanging out?

Now, I wouldn't call them all unintelligent; I've seen Flat Earth people entirely capable of complex processing and lateral thinking, etc. But.., whoa boy, when you poke around, you discover that they are sporting various broken spots, gross and subtle. People who just have bugs in their code.

I've looked at and reviewed pretty much every argument floated by the official Flat Earth Society website, (for those who have not, you should give it a few hours to visit sometime). Though it's been a couple of years now, each time I go back to see what's new on offer, I come away sadly unimpressed. I keep hoping there will be some staggering new paradigm-shifting item to blow my mind! Wouldn't that be just the coolest thing ever? "What.., wait a moment. Really??" -Well, besides perpetual motion being a real thing. That would be wonderful! But no. There isn't a single item presented by the Flat Earth Society which isn't a hopeless mess of plainly faulty logic. The eight year-old boy in me is always disappointed. I'll just have to make due with real magic and real wonder and real miracles. Like spirits and UFOs and comet impacts and such. (Rocks from space! Think about that!)

But anyway... there's also Trolls.

The Flat Earth stuff isn't put forward just by young souls who were once 2D mammals for whom the Earth really was, for all intents and purposes, flat ...

Not just logically impaired people who have trouble with deduction and concepts of measurement and general physics...

Not just crazy people who have other kinds of more pressing critical impairment.

Not just stubborn people who reject on principle.

But ALSO trolls; those who just like to poke to get a reaction.

The C's call these people, "Organic Portals" and described engaging with them in terms of being irresistible, almost like (paraphrasing) an addictive behavior.

I've always wondered if they eat the energy they suck from people themselves, or if they just get a percentage on commission as it makes its way up through the rest of the milking machine?

But yeah.., at this point, you can pretty much navigate the social landscape by keeping tabs on who believes what in which way. Nobody is going to change their mind at this point. The Great Sorting has largely taken place and what we're left with are the gleefully stubborn, the hopelessly stupid, and the pastorally bovine.

Woodsman Do you realise that science refused to even acknowledge that rocks fall from the "space" until the 1850s

What happened when people tried to present proof of rocks that fell from the sky ... well they were ridiculed, called morons and retards

apocryphal, but:

when Yale chemistry professor Benjamin Silliman proposed an extraterrestrial source for a meteor that exploded over the town of Weston in 1807, Thomas Jefferson is famously claimed to have retorted “I would more easily believe that [a] Yankee professor would lie than that stones would fall from heaven"

Jason I'm afraid that for many people, having failed in insults and personal attacks, will find this poor example as proof ... not sure what off, maybe that all things observed as flat are really basket balls

Another proof that was willingly accepted, by these "mentally superior" globists, is the cartoon of a car floating in space

Um...all the planet we can observe, and the sun, are spheres that rotate. We can see that they are round. To assume that the Earth is an exception would require exceptional evidence, which to date has not been provided.

Blisslife While it seems they most likely are, the truth is none of the luminaries we see in the sky can be positively identified as spherical from the ground. Furthermore, your reasoning is akin to a pool table seeing all the balls on top of it and deducing that it must also be a ball. It's total idiocy; you should stop trying to make that point.

johnwannamaker Um, my reasoning is that every other planet and moon is some sort of spheroid. We can clearly observe all sides of them, watch the great red spot rotate around jupiter, or the storm on saturn. BTW gravity, though not completely understood, appears to form large objects into spheres, based upon calculations and observations.

There don't appear to be any calculations nor observations of "flatland" worlds.

If I understand your argument, I am the pool table, see all the planets, which by observation and calculations, can determine size and distance, and they appear to be round. Ok, understood.

Since the earth appears to be a planet orbiting around the sun, as the other planets are, why am I a pool table?

This proves only that a sphere can be observed as flat under the right conditions and with the right equipment.
Big deal. Just because a basketball can look flat is no proof that any other flat-looking object is automatically a sphere.
That is very poor logic.
More importantly, the mean-spirited insulting comments in this thread prove that main-stream brainwashing has eliminated all manner of polite discourse on this matter.The vituperation here should be amazing but sadly is instead expected, and shows that people are not even willing to discuss matters calmly and without resorting to ad hominem attacks.
There's obviously no use in even putting forward any observations or thoughts for discussion, as people immediately go into knee-jerk reaction mode and start spewing nasty words at their fellow humans instead of embracing the imagination that leads us to new discoveries and new understanding.
These people don't seem to be interested in questioning, they don't seem to be curious about all the anomalies and problems with the heliocentric model.
Science is about questioning EVERYTHING -- evidently, that doesn't apply here.

Before the self-chosen psychopaths, with their hierarchical control of information and knowledge, reinvented and disseminated the flat earth nonsense, the electric universe physics was exposing the lies of the hierarchical ruling psychopaths, showing people the real nature of physics, now if you do a search on the electric universe there are tonnes of pages on flat earth electric universe, they created the lie to direct the stupid away from the truth of the electric universe by contaminating it with such absurd and obvious nonsense as flat earth.

I'm not a flat earther, but I do find it interesting that we don't have any real "non-stictched together" & "photoshopped" photos of Earth from space. Likewise, I find the fish eye lens vs. non-fish eye lens arguments interesting. Then there are the arguments which turn most flight theory on its head..... etc., etc., etc. OTOH, I don't really care one way or another (just like I could care less about whether we went to the moon in the 60's or whether it was all an elaborately scripted hoax) - nothing would surprise me any longer at this point since it is obvious that we pleebs are lied to all the time from the time we are boarn.

3. Build your own camera (since FE claims ALL camera manufacturers are "in on it" and send it up in a balloon. Some kids did the balloon part fairly recently but used a manufactured camera so OBVIOUSLY it was one of the "defective automatic fish-eye when taking pictures of earth from space kind."

I haven't spent any time investigating the FE claims as I find them mostly hilarious.

- All governments have a treaty prohibiting the revelation that the earth is flat? When have you known more than a few governments to agree about ANYTHING?

- All camera makers & the fish-eye thing is about the same. The science behind making lenses is hundreds of years old. If all cameras were modified in some way I would think someone with a PhD in optics might have spilled the beans by now.

I've read several FE comments on this site that mention "I've done the experiments." (One day, when I'm REALLY bored I may search for the experiments they're talking about.. but it's likely someone has debunked them already.) In any event if you're going to truly "do some science" then you'd have to test the null hypothesis and see if there is data that suggests that the earth actually IS round. All the FE commentary I've seen seems to suggest that the anti-hypothesis is never tested.

(While not terribly successful I did attempt to minimize the "mocking tone.") ;>

"We've proven the reliability of the payload electronics and tracking methods, the payload returned in perfect condition, that's a lot to say for something that's been to 23.6km and plunged back to earth at over 44.7m/s. The tracking also worked perfectly, we are indebted to the amateur radio community for helping us to set up the tracking equipment."

The team is planning future launches aiming to test the full sensor and advanced navigation systems which time constraints prevented them from launching on the first flight. With the control electronics proven they consider their chances of success to be high.

I have two simple concerns, regardless of which side of the fence you sit.

(1) The world practically rotates with a linear velocity of 1000mph at the equator, why aren't the stars at night moving, whizzing by?

For those willing to go through the math of it, if the linear velocity at the equator is 1000mph, imagine what the end-of-sight velocity at Alpha Centurai will be. Alpha Centurai is the nearest brightest group of stars to Earth. It is also 4.37 light years away. Yet, we can see stationary stars blinking at us, at nights.

(2) Earth is in space. Space is a vacuum. Where does Earth get its atmospheric pressure of 15 psi, 1 atmosphere? From whence comes its air?